VoiceXML Forum and Analysts

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Meanwhile, the VoiceXML Forum on Tuesday announced its support for the W3Cs move to standardize VoiceXML 2.0. The Piscataway, N.J.-based organization said the more than 370 companies in the VoiceXML Forum support the specification and are creating and offering VoiceXML applications and services.
In addition, the VoiceXML Forum announced its plans to launch a VoiceXML Platform Certification Program, where VoiceXML vendors will be able to have their products tested for compliance with the latest versions of the VoiceXML standard.

"Just as important as interacting with visual user interfaces is the need to interact with voice, phone, and other verbal forms of interaction," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, of Waltham, Mass. "As such, the W3C has produced the VoiceXML specification, focused on allowing users to interact with a variety of voice-based interfaces including touch-tone keypads, spoken commands, prerecorded speech, synthetic speech, and music. VoiceXML enables users to create interfaces that can be used across Web browsers, telephones, and voice-activated systems."

"VoiceXML allows users to create a description of a dialog between computer and user that can output text, graphics, synthesized speech, digitized audio, and also provides means to recognize inputs from all these sources," he added. According to Schmelzer, a number of companies, including AT&T, Lucent, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Motorola, and others are working on voice-based browsers, intelligent phone applications, and other applications based on VoiceXML.
The VoiceXML Forum said that more than 10,000 VoiceXML-based applications have been deployed throughout the world. For instance, Cingular Wireless uses VoiceXML services from BeVocal Inc. to provide voice-activated dialing and other services to its more than 22 million customers, officials at the VoiceXML Forum said.
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Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.